The Manly Catholic
Well it's easy. All you have to do is read the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Or go to a good Catholic Church. God made nothing hidden from us.
I read it for 11 years since I entered my private Catholic school, and it was taught to me. And in Church and in school, I never felt close to your God. In fact, he was as absent from the pulpit as the teachings as ever.
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It has nothing to do with what I believe. This is what it means to be a Catholic. I am speaking to this lady as one Catholic to Another.
This is what it means to be Catholic in your view.
How do you know that the OP is a Catholic and wishes to continue being a Catholic. I left the faith at 15.
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I think it's vain to think you can pick and choose how to worship God, when he already told us how to worship him.
It's vain how you think that you are worshipping him correctly or that he wishes to be worshipped, or that he needs worship.
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As if a human being knows better than God himself how to worship him.
You cannot know what God wants because if he exists, then he is far too superior to be understood by our puny mammalian brains. You can never know him, because there are no words to describe what he would say or how he feels about anything.
But, as I doubt his existence, it is far more likely that leaders claim to know what he is saying so that their bigotry matches their God's alleged views.
Convenient. Arrogant.
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Be careful. He may say the things you want to hear but that does not make him right.
Nor does it make you right. Let the OP decide.
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This is your soul, your eternal destiny that is at stake here. Look at it from an objective, logical viewpoint.
My advice to the OP exactly. That they make up their mind. That they aren't coerced or guilted or manipulated or told this is what God says. You can't possibly know what God says and if you do, you're a liar and a con-man.
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It is not good enough to just be a decent person.
It is more than enough. If there is a God out there somewhere, he/she wants us to be good people. It is more than enough to be helpful, compassionate and love others as one loves oneself and to be caring. Nothing more should be required.
If that damns us, so be it. That would damn God even more so if he punished us for doing good.
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You are required to be more than a descent person. I think you owe that to the God who made you and gave you life.
The OP isn't required to be more than the best they can be. They aren't required to pray or go to Church. Not required to believe in a God or gods. Only required to follow their conscience and do what is best for themselves and others.
They owe God
nothing.
The OP's parents made her. Take biology again. Sexual reproduction. Not creation from dust. Honestly.
Also, you can stop trying to convert people.
Your faith is as dry and dead as the pages on the Bibles at your cathedrals and basilicas. God isn't in that opulence and vanity.
God is far from the expensive threads of the sacerdos.
God turns away from the blood the Vatican has spilt.
Your Mother Church is rotten.